{"id":229358,"date":"2025-09-15T18:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T18:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/229358\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T18:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T18:26:10","slug":"nbc-bets-jimmy-fallons-advertising-antics-will-tamp-late-night-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/229358\/","title":{"rendered":"NBC Bets Jimmy Fallon’s Advertising Antics Will Tamp Late-Night Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOne of the most important guests in the history of NBC<\/a>\u2019s \u201cTonight Show\u201d isn\u2019t a movie or TV star and probably won\u2019t play any games on set with the host.<\/p>\n

\n\tFord Motor Co. will have a hard-to-miss role in the program Monday evening, which will show an episode taped at the Detroit Opera House filled with an audience of Ford employees and partners. Home viewers are likely to see video segments threaded across the episode with Fallon nodding to the automaker and a new campaign, says Lisa Materazzo, Ford\u2019s chief marketing officer.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat we like to do is tell stories, and Jimmy is the same,\u201d says the marketing executive. \u201cHe does it in such creative ways that it really lands well with the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAdvertisers have been asking late-night hosts for years to do live commercials<\/a> on their popular shows or create sketches that put a spotlight on specific products<\/a>. But the hosts\u2019 desire to do such bits may become more important as the economics of wee-hours TV are undermined<\/a> by viewers\u2019 growing interest in watching programs at times of their own choosing, not when the networks tell them they must. Many young viewers tend to look at Fallon and his late-night contemporaries on YouTube or other social-media outlets.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat has spurred cutbacks in the amount of money advertisers spend on late-night TV, long seen as a media institution in the U.S. Advertisers committed around $439 million to five late night shows on broadcast TV in 2018 \u2014 \u201cLate Show\u201d and \u201cLate Late Show\u201d on CBS; \u201cTonight\u201d and \u201cLate Night\u201d on NBC; and \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live\u201d on ABC \u2014 according to Guideline, a tracker of ad spending. By 2024, those dollars had slumped 49.8% to $220.6 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tCBS said earlier this year that the migration of viewers out of linear TV had crimped the financials of late-night programs so much that it was getting out of the business entirely<\/a>. The Paramount-backed network scrapped \u201cAfter Midnight,\u201d a 12:30 a.m. show, after host Taylor Tomlinson decided to return to stand up<\/a>, opting to fill the hour with a syndicated comedy roundtable from entrepreneur Byron Allen that people familiar with the matter will result in CBS getting paid to put the show on its air. CBS raised eyebrows further in July by announcing it would cancel its long-running \u201cLate Show,\u201d<\/a> launched by David Letterman and currently hosted by Stephen Colbert, in May of next year \u2014 despite the show\u2019s first place standing in the ratings.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBC may see millions of dollars in advertising that it can win over to its side. Colbert\u2019s \u201cLate Show\u201d captured more than $57 million in 2024, according to data from ad-tracker iSpot TV, and more than $61 million in 2023. Fallon\u2019s \u201cTonight\u201d typically brings more ad money than either Colbert or ABC\u2019s \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live,\u201d according to iSpot, with \u201cTonight: wining $78 million in 2024 and $104.7 million in 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBC has more tied to late-night TV than its rival. The Comcast-backed network created the format, launching \u201cTonight\u201d in 1954, \u201cTomorrow\u201d in 1973 with host Tom Snyder, and \u201cLate Night\u201d in 1982 with David Letterman. NBC has also been home for half a century to late-night weekend showcase \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d which is one of TV\u2019s biggest non-sports draws for the audiences between 18 and 49 that advertisers say they covet.,<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou have marketers who are looking for ways to really grab attention and link with intellectual property that matters, whether that\u2019s with a personality or a show like \u2018Love Island\u2019 or sports,\u201d says Mark Marshall, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. When a late-night host teams up with an advertiser, he adds, the results can also appear outside the show and appeal to various followings on social media. \u201cAnything that can travel with the personality is what they are looking for,\u201d he says of marketers.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBC worked with a select group of advertisers<\/a> during last season\u2019s 50th anniversary of \u201cSNL,\u201d brokering deals that called for executive producer Lorne Michaels, cast members and writers to create commercials<\/a> with sponsors including Allstate and T-Mobile. \u201cWe will absolutely continue to find new ways to partner with all of the late-night shows,\u201d says Marshall. \u201cWe are having some conversations with Seth Meyers and some different advertisers as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFord has worked with NBC and \u201cTonight\u201d for five years, with Fallon taking an increasingly bigger interest in the types of work his staff does for the auto giant. He maintains a relationship with Ford CEO Jim Farley and meets with Ford executives regularly to find out what products and initiatives are top of mind. In the past, Fallon\u2019s team created a video that had the host raising a \u201cbaby Bronco,\u201d and another that spotlighted the electric F-150 Lighting and its \u201cfront trunk,\u201d or \u201cfrunk,\u201d complete with an accompanying song and music video.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you have a partner who is truly interested in co-creating with you,\u201d says Materazzo, the result \u201cis not cookie cutter. It\u2019s not a one size fits all program and that\u2019s what we love about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch alliances must be crafted carefully, says Marshall. Though Fallon has done work with State Farm and Walmart, among others, and is likely to create a new concept for Ford once every quarter, NBC can\u2019t overwhelm \u201cTonight\u201d with advertising, no matter how much work the host puts into the ideas. \u201cConsumers start to tune them out when they see it day after day after day,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tFallon\u2019s interest in advertising is poised to gain more notice. The host is at the center of a new NBC reality compete show, \u201cOn Brand with Jimmy Fallon<\/a>,\u201d that will have him spending each hour-long episode working on a new marketing assignment for clients including Dunkin\u2019 and Captain Morgan.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did he get the Madison Avenue bug? It\u2019s unclear, but the host must have noticed marketers\u2019 interest when he first started his tenure at \u201cTonight\u201d in 2014. In Fallon\u2019s earliest weeks, he discussed his interest in purchasing a new truck. Nissan, General Motors and Dodge\u2019s Ram Trucks all issued tweets attempting to make a sale.\u00a0<\/a> Ram even parked one of its vehicles outside the \u201cTonight\u201d studio at NBC\u2019s venerable 30 Rockefeller Center headquarters with a sign asking the comic if the truck met with his approval. Among those making a pitch? Ford Motor Co.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most important guests in the history of NBC\u2019s \u201cTonight Show\u201d isn\u2019t a movie or TV…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":229359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,1029,63863,1030,123834,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-229358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jimmy-fallon","10":"tag-late-night-tv","11":"tag-nbc","12":"tag-tonight-show-starring-jimmy-fallon","13":"tag-tv","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}